Dramatic footage has emerged of North Korea reportedly destroying its nuclear test site - just as Donald Trump scrapped a highly anticipated summit with Kim Jong Un.

The clips shows a huge blast in the countryside, leaving behind piles of rubble and a large dust cloud while invited western journalists looked on.

Sky News, the only British broadcaster invited, said it had witnessed what North Korea claims to be the destruction of its nuclear test tunnels at Punggye-ri.

Sky's Tom Cheshire said: "We hiked up into the mountains and watched the demolition about 500 metres away.

"There was a huge explosion, you could feel it.

"Dust came at you, the heat came at you. It was extremely loud."

A demolition said to be taking place at North Korea's nuclear test centre (
Image:
REUTERS)
Plumes of smoke fill the air (
Image:
REUTERS)
North Korea People's Army (KPA) soldiers standing at the entrance to a tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear test facility prior to a demolition 'ceremony' (
Image:
AFP)
Photo taken yesterday shows the debris after the demolition (
Image:
AFP)

North Korea claimed the tunnels and equipment that had been installed at the observation centre, control centre and research institute in the northern nuclear test ground were dismantled and withdrawn.

This included information communications and power systems and construction and operation equipment.

The process of the dismantlement was covered by reporters from the UK, China, Russia, the US, and South Korea.

Explosives are placed in one of the tunnels in Punggye (
Image:
REUTERS)
Satellite images understood to show North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear test facility (
Image:
REUTERS)
Satellite images from the North Hamgyong Province, North Korea (
Image:
REUTERS)

Although the decision to demolish the test site has been welcomed internationally it is not an irreversible move with other steps also required to meet Trump's demands for denuclearisation.

A source told online newspaper Daily NK that the regime has designated Chagang Province a 'Special Military-first Revolutionary Zone' and that the regime will hide its weapons and materials in tunnels beneath the mountains there.

The source said: “Nuclear weapons can be hidden anywhere but the North Korean authorities have chosen, it seems, a place where even satellites will have difficulty locating them.”

A TV news broadcast showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (
Image:
REX/Shutterstock)
People in South Korea watching a TV report on the demolition (
Image:
Getty Images AsiaPac)

It comes as Trump called off a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for next month, citing Pyongyang's "open hostility."

Trump warned that the US military was ready in the event of any reckless acts by North Korea.

But North Korea has responded saying it sets in high regards "President Trump's efforts, unprecedented by any other president, to create a historic North Korea-US summit."

North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un (
Image:
AFP)
US President Donald Trump (
Image:
AFP)

Trump wrote a letter to Kim to announce his abrupt withdrawal from what would have been the first ever meeting between a serving US president and a North Korean leader in Singapore on June 12.

"Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it would be inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting," Trump wrote.

It was a dramatic end to weeks of optimistic statements from Trump that by meeting with Kim he might succeed where previous US presidents had failed and persuade North Korea to give up a nuclear weapons programme.

After the summit was called off, North Korea's vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said the North is open to resolving issues with the United States whenever and however.

"We had set in high regards President Trump's efforts, unprecedented by any other president, to create a historic North Korea-US summit," said the vice foreign minister in a statement released by the North's central news agency.

"We tell the United States once more that we are open to resolving problems at any time in any way," he said.